Site Mobile Navigation

Calif. Governor Candidates Meet in Heated Debate

SAN FRANCISCO — With the stakes — and tempers — running high, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown clashed on issues both substantive and scandalous in the final debate of the hard-fought and closely watched California governor’s race on Tuesday night.

Early on, both candidates worked to their strengths. Mr. Brown, the Democrat, flashed knowledge of intricacies of state government, while Ms. Whitman, the Republican, who showed more confidence than in earlier debates, offered her case that she was a “job creator” in a state with an unemployment rate of more than 12 percent.

But near the midpoint of the hourlong debate, Mr. Brown and Ms. Whitman engaged in heated banter over remarks made by a Brown campaign aide — inadvertently recorded in early September on a voicemail message and released last week by a Los Angeles police union — referring to Ms. Whitman as a “whore.”

It is not clear whether Mr. Brown heard the remark, or acknowledged it, but he apologized again on Tuesday, though he objected to a characterization by Tom Brokaw, the former NBC News anchor who was serving as the moderator, that the word was equivalent to a racial slur.

“This is a five-week-old private conversation picked up on a cellphone with a garbled transmission, very hard to detect who it is,” Mr. Brown said. “The campaign apologized promptly, and I affirm that apology tonight.”

Photo

Jerry BrownCredit
Pool photo by Rich Pedroncelli

Ms. Whitman rolled her eyes and scolded Mr. Brown. “It’s the people of California who deserve better than slurs and personal attacks,” she said. “That’s not what California is about.”

But Mr. Brown did not back down, pointing out that one of Ms. Whitman’s senior advisers, former Gov. Pete Wilson, had once referred to Congress as “whores,” in reference to the public sector unions.

The debate, in front of a demonstrative crowd at Dominican University in San Rafael, just north of San Francisco, was the most combative of three meetings between the two candidates. At the most recent debate, in Fresno this month, Ms. Whitman had to answer questions about a Mexican housekeeper, Nicandra Díaz Santillán, whom she employed for nine years.

Ms. Whitman said she fired Ms. Díaz Santillán after discovering her immigration status, and recent polls found weakening support from Latinos. Mr. Brokaw also addressed this issue, asking Ms. Whitman how, if she could not find an illegal immigrant working in her own home, she expected businesses to do so.

Mr. Brown said that the nation needed comprehensive immigration reform, and that compassion had to be shown to illegal immigrants. “These are mothers and dads, and kids,” he said, adding that Ms. Whitman’s opposition to allowing some path to citizenship was cruel. “I don’t think that’s human; I don’t think it’s right.”

The debate came just three weeks before California voters go to the polls, after years of recurring budget deficits exacerbated by the recession and a collapse in the housing market.

Ms. Whitman, the billionaire former chief executive of eBay, has poured more than $120 million of her fortune into the race. But Ms. Whitman said she was the one who was “up against some pretty big entrenched interests,” a reference to the state’s influential public unions, who have largely backed Mr. Brown, a two-term former governor. He responded that a Whitman administration would largely benefit the rich.

Earlier, Mr. Brown had raised the proposed elimination of the capital gains tax. “Ms. Whitman, I would like to ask you: how much money will you save if these tax breaks were in effect this year or last year?”

Ms. Whitman acknowledged that she was an investor and that “investors will benefit from this.” But she added: “My track record is creating jobs. My business is creating jobs. Your business is politics.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 13, 2010, on page A16 of the National edition with the headline: Candidates for California Governor Meet in Heated Final Debate. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe